Preventing invasions: seven lessons after the fall of Kabul

Chris Alexander adapted this piece for The Niagara Independent from an article he recently penned for Waterloo’s Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). You can visit CIGI’s website here. Pictured are individuals donning Taliban flags near the ‘Friendship Gate’ crossing in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border town of Chaman, July 14, 2021. Photo credit: Reuters/Abdul Khaliq Achakzai

A larger neighbour has invaded Afghanistan. This is a story to which anyone living in the Niagara peninsula can relate. After all, it’s happened to us three times. Pitt’s war to take Quebec; the US invasion of 1775; and the War of 1812 were all invasions of Canada – the last one ending well over two hundred years ago. The difference is this: Afghanistan has been under attack by its larger neighbour for fifty years – twenty of those while the US and NATO had a UN-backed military mission to protect them. Yet no UN or NATO resolution has yet named this larger neighbour as a belligerent party. How could this happen?

Looking back on the failed US, UN and NATO strategies in Afghanistan that led to the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul on August 15, two distinct months, eighteen years apart, haunt me:

The first was March 2003. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, with nom de guerre ‘Mokhtar,’ was the main architect of the 9/11 conspiracy. A Pakistani from Baluchistan, he was an asset of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) who worked for Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, leader of one of the seven Afghan mujahidin parties in late 1985, and arranged for Osama Bin Laden to visit one of his wives in Karachi in 2002 or early 2003.

On March 1, 2003, ISI arrested Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, later handing him over to the US. He was subsequently tortured, denied habeas corpus, detained as a prisoners of war, then convicted in a civilian trial (in violation of the Geneva Convention). He now faces the death penalty in the US.

‘Mokhtar’ was arrested just before a Pakistani military delegation arrived in Washington. It was led by military dictator Pervez Musharraf’s direct subordinate, General Mohammad Yusaf Khan, then Vice Chief of the Army Staff of Pakistan, accompanied by Major General Ashfaque Parvez Kayani, then director of the Directorate General of Military Operations for Pakistan’s army. The visiting Pakistanis found US military and intelligence leaders totally preoccupied with the forthcoming invasion of Iraq, which began on March 19 and satisfied with ‘Mokhtar’s’ capture.

The Pakistani generals concluded it was time to restart their proxy war in Afghanistan, where Taliban field commanders were ordered to return to the offensive. On March 27, Ricardo Munguia, a 39-year-old water supply engineer for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was murdered on a road in Oruzgan province on the orders of Mullah Dadullah “Lang” Akhund, a Taliban commander who would lead the movement’s military resurgence, particularly in southern Afghanistan, until his death in 2007. A string of attacks against aid workers followed through 2003 and 2004.

Over the subsequent phases of Pakistan’s proxy war in Afghanistan from March 2003 until March 2018, over 120,000 Afghans were killed, alongside 158 Canadian Forces members and ten Canadian civilians; 2355 US military service members; 456 members of the UK armed forces; 534 from 28 other NATO members and partners; dozens of UN officials and aid workers; Indian and Canadian diplomats; a UAE ambassador and five members of his staff.

Throughout this period there was no move, by any state or international organization, to impose sanctions on Pakistan – although it was waging a large-scale covert war against Afghanistan, the US, NATO and other states supporting Afghanistan under a UN mandate.

On the contrary, the international community endorsed “Afghan-led peace, reintegration and reconciliation efforts” at the London conference in 2010. It stood by when the US did a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 that excluded the Afghan government and pledged to withdraw all US and allied military forces by April 29, 2021. On April 14, 2021, US President Biden confirmed US forces would depart before the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

The second fateful month was May 2021. Less than one month after Biden’s announcement, Pakistan’s military leader General Javed Qamar Bajwa – Pakistan’s third Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) since Musharraf and second since Kayani – visited Kabul. He arrived on May 10, 2021 in an aircraft provided by General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the UK Defense Staff, who had commanded ISAF forces in Afghanistan. According to then-president Ashraf Ghani, Bajwa opposed a Taliban comeback but admitted “some of the lower levels in the army” in Pakistan held the opposite view. Bajwa assured reporters Pakistan remained committed to peace. Pakistan’s invasion started the next day, taking ninety-five days to reach Kabul.

Up to the very end, the US and its partners exaggerated prospects for peace, misunderstood the real nature of the war and ignored Pakistan’s role.

The following seven lessons point to a need for dramatic change if we want a safer world better equipped to protect vulnerable populations from proxy war, despotism and abuse:

First, we can never again rely on a strategy backed by intelligence assessments that leave out the actual belligerent. NATO countries need national and shared capacity to understand clearly what Pakistan, Russia, China, Iran and other aggressive players are doing to us, to their neighbours and to each other. We can no longer rely on the US to anchor this effort.

Second, those who plan and undertake attacks as part of proxy wars need to be held to account. They can be held as prisoners of war, or arrested as criminal suspects, but not both. The best solution would be to expand national and international judicial capacity to prosecute and try members of recognized terrorist groups and key protagonists in today’s proxy wars.

Third, the international sanctions regime needs root-and-branch reform. The current UN Consolidated List, which includes Taliban and Al Qaida leaders, has become a standing joke, with Pakistan in flagrant violation of virtually every provision. Iran-backed groups remain ignored, as do extremist proxies backed by China, Russia and other states.

Fourth, Pakistan deserves withering sanctions. The scale of its proxy war and invasion in Afghanistan dwarfs anything Russia has undertaken in Ukraine since 2014. Every day Pakistan escapes accountability for re-imposing the Taliban on Afghanistan undermines the authority of the UN Charter, NATO credibility, and US influence and prestige. As former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen has now said, it is time to “cut Pakistan loose.”

Fifth, we need to increase our shared capacity to defend human rights; support independent media to engage in professional journalism; and give voice to groups, peoples and movements facing repression, proxy war or genocide. This should involve attempts to rescue the UN Human Rights Council and other existing bodies from their current torpor, while deploying additional multilateral capacity backed by democracies to counter propaganda, disinformation, dictatorship and armed conflict supported by regimes enjoying impunity.

Sixth, the international community should unanimously and vocally condemn the illegal Taliban regime, which has already engaged in war crimes, and support the Afghan resistance.

Seventh, Canada should lead a coalition of friends and partners of Afghanistan to deliver the largest and most effective response to the massive humanitarian, IDP and refugee crisis to follow. We need to see safe havens for the vulnerable, continued support for schools and a large-scale initiative to prevent famine. 

At the end of the day, the rules of the UN Charter – sovereignty, non-interference, a commitment to human dignity and basic freedoms – must apply to all of us on this planet, or they will protect none of us. Afghanistan deserves to be as free of large-scale invasion as Canada has been since 1815.

Chris Alexander served as Canada’s Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 until 2005. He then worked as Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan until 2009. As a federal politician, Alexander served as Canada’s Minister of Immigration and Citizenship from 2013 to 2015. He holds a BA in History and Politics from McGill and an MA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Oxford.